Old Brand New

Think trading on a carmaker's illustrious past is a recent phenomenon?

Feature Article from Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car

The Mini. New Beetle. Fiat 500. For the better part of a decade and a half, retro-anything has been seen as the way forward in the world of cars. Though reviving old lines in steel is no longer a new idea, a link with history remains a viable contemporary identity. Yet the lure of yesteryear, strong as it might be today, has always remained an essential piece of equipment in the ad man's tool box.
Linking old and new has long been a way of establishing heritage with an audience that may not know anything about a particular marque. For those who are a little more car-savvy, the older models serve as a visual reminder of past greatness, and offer some assurance that this new vehicle will be among them, if not now, then soon. The cars being hawked may not themselves feel overtly retro, particularly in their day, but by placing new cars among the old, the ad men who made these pages generally aimed for a residual effect: They wanted the rose-tinted warm-and-fuzzies to rub off on you so you'd buy a car.
Twenty-year-old models are classic, while last year's model is merely superseded by today's far-better offering--or so advertising would have you believe. Today, the machines in these ads are old themselves--they are as much a part of their marque's heritage as the still-older models they appear with. In a modern context, they're all heritage models--whether they look like it or not.

This article originally appeared in the January, 2013 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car.